Charlotte Strawberry (everbearing) - Fragaria ananassa

The Charlotte strawberry produces medium-sized heart-shaped fruits with firm flesh and a sweet, slightly acidic taste, reminiscent of wild strawberries: woody and musky aromas. It is a perpetual variety that produces from June until the first frost in October. It is a 2004 selection from Ciref that produces a hardy and vigorous strawberry, with good productivity and resistance to phytophthora, powdery mildew, and anthracnose. However, it is sensitive to Verticillium. Charlotte is a reliable choice for the vegetable garden!

Strawberries can be consumed in multiple ways: eaten fresh, with sugar, cream, or sliced thinly and dried before being added to muesli or yoghurt. If you have a bountiful harvest, consider making jams, sauces, pies, ice cream, or sorbets. You can also freeze strawberries.

There are three categories of strawberry varieties:

- Wild strawberries or perpetual strawberries, producing small fruits from June to October

- Non-perpetual large fruit varieties, flowering once a year in spring and producing very large fruits around June

- Perpetual large fruit varieties, flowering twice a year or continuously, producing large fruits from June to October

Indeed, the wild strawberry or woodland strawberry, present in Roman times and the Middle Ages, was crossed in the 18th century with a species brought from Chile, resulting in different large fruit varieties through successive selections.

The strawberry is a hardy perennial belonging to the Rosaceae family. This variety has a stocky habit, with persistent, ovate, and dentate trifoliate leaves. It produces small white flowers with a golden centre that transform into large red fruits. Botanically speaking, strawberries are considered pseudocarps, with the achenes (seeds) visible on the surface of the skin.

For harvesting, pick the fruits as they ripen, every 2 or 3 days, ideally in the morning. Strawberries are delicate, so pick them with their calyx by pinching the stem 1 to 2 cm (0.5 to 1in) above it. The texture of the fruit is a good indicator of ripeness. It should be firm and yielding to the touch. Strawberries are rich in vitamins and minerals. They can cause urticating reactions in some individuals as they stimulate the release of histamine in the body.